09 April 2008 10:57 AM

The Gathering Storm

This is just a warning of a great shock-wave of controversy heading our way soon. Two powerful new books, which I managed to obtain and read in the USA last week, assault the reputation of Winston Churchill and question many of our fondest beliefs about the Second World War. Both will be published in this country during May. I have to say that it was a pretty dark and dispiriting experience to spend so much time on such grim, upsetting study. All the material has been published before, but not in such concentrated form and not at such a significant moment. It is the timing, and the concentrated force of the arguments, that make this such an interesting development.

For the Iraq war was sold to us very much as a 'good war', by people who used Second World War terms - especially 'appeasement' - in their arguments. And that is why the failure of the Iraq war, now largely seen as a 'Bad War', has shone a cold light on the Second World War, still largely viewed as a 'Good War'. Was World War Two so good? Was it fought in a civilised fashion and for good reasons.

I have less trouble with one of the forthcoming books - "Human Smoke", by Nicholson Baker - than I do with the other - "Churchill, Hitler and the unnecessary war - How Britain lost its Empire and the West Lost the World", by Patrick Buchanan. I have never met Mr Baker, and I do not share his pacifism. I think war is sometimes necessary and pacifism a silly indulgence pursued by the inhabitants of countries with big navies and plenty of sea between them and the nearest enemy. Even so, his volume contains some disturbing facts, quotations and claims which many, long comforted by the story of the Good War, will wish they had not read.

Whereas I have met Pat Buchanan and respect him as a brave and original thinker whose warnings - about the decay of the West and about the Iraq war, for example - are often borne out. On this subject, he is definitely going to be in trouble, because of his long and unpopular sympathy for the 'America First' movement which tried, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, to keep the USA out of World War Two - a cause he still thinks was just. The problem with 'America First' is that it attracted the support of those who wished to help the German Nazis, or who were sympathetic in general to Germany under Hitler - including the rabble of anti-semites. A fairly common view of it, and of its most influential figure - Charles Lindbergh - is given in Philip Roth's recent historical fantasy novel "The War against America". Many in Britain aren't really aware of this movement and its considerable power, now forgotten amid the sentiment of the alleged 'special relationship'. If they were, would they have the same rather soppy view of the Atlantic Alliance that is common here now?

But 'America First' and its long shadow will be Pat Buchanan's problem now. Will the world's justified loathing of the Nazis, which ought never to fade, mean that people simply do not want to listen to a book which suggests that America was right to keep out, and that Britain, too should have stayed out of the European conflict in 1939 and 1940 - and thereby saved its empire and its position as a world power? It is very hard for a British person to stomach this view. But what if there is much truth in it? What if our decline into a third-class power wasn't inevitable, but actually brought about by a war we all regard as a triumph? This is dangerous stuff. I hope to write about it all at far greater length in the Mail on Sunday, soon.

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A little secret for all sparrow brains to try and understand.
HITLER had pleaded with CHURCHILL to ally himself with Germany against SOVIET RUSSIA . CHURCHILL refused and allied with the Soviets. At that time the holocaust was not even considered and HITLER blamed Jews for influencing Churchill ,as he had many Jewish friends . Hitler said " If because of this Britain becomes our enemy I shall wipe the Jews off the face of Europe " That and that alone is why the massacre of Jews ocurred and Churchill was the root cause, Hitlers only objective was to eradicate Soviet Russia and he always looked on the English as Germanic and as friends, Bolshevism in Russia murdered 60 millions under Stalin and Hitler 6 millions, so who was the biggest killer.The underlying truth is often the real cause of events,and not the pedantic nonsense of writers who use 10 words when one will do, like all lying politicians.

The war was decided in Russia. Anybody who doubts his should look at where Germany's divisions spent the war, and where the overwhelming majority of German casualties were taken. The Western allies destroyed less than 200 Axis divisions. The Soviets destroyed over 600.

But... Britain played a crucial role. Mussolini's disastrous venture into Greece which was so dramatically repelled forced Hiter to intervene, and to delay Barbarossa by several weeks, which meant his armies eventually ran into the icy mud around Moscow. As a result, Stalin was able to complete the withdrawal of Soviet industry across the Urals and establish the basis for fighting back.

No Britain in the early stages might have meant the defeat of the Soviet Union. A defeated Soviet Union would certainly have meant victory for the Axis. Britain would not have survived for that long as a major power had Germany achieved real domination over all those resources and labour. Suez and the Middle East would have fallen eventually, even if we were not actually invaded.

On the other hand, if Britain and the US had not intervened come 1945, against a Germany that had already lost, there's the possibility that Stalin's forces would have dominated the entire continent. That too would have been a disaster for British and American interests.

I think Churchill knew what he was doing. It's a pity the Americans were so committed to ending the old colonial empires and ensuring world-wide access for US companies at our expense – but hey, you can't win them all.

I agree with you re your first paragraph, ie had we not declared war in 1939 it would not have been necessary to offer concessions for peace in 1940.

I don't understand this though:

"..USSR which might be more defensible against surprise attack because it would not have seized Eastern Poland and because Hiter might not by then have occupied Western Poland either"

Germany/Russia would have invaded Poland in 1939 regardless of whether it provoked us into declaring war. I don't understand what you are trying to say here.

It is very odd indeed (from a strategic point of view) that Hitler declared war on the USA after Pearl Harbour despite already being up to his neck in Russia. It was an absurd decision that ensured that Churchill could persuade the Amercians to adopt a Germany first approach. Had we not been at war in 1942 I think it equally likely that he would have declared war equally absurdly on us, especially if Japan had simultaneously attacked the British navy when it launched the Pearl Harbour attack. By that stage Hitler had become a fruitcake as Von Paulus discovered at Stalingrad.

Also by not getting involved we would have left Germany free to complete development of nuclear weapons and put them on the tips of V2's and declare war that way.

In the end the post versailles cartoonist of 1919 got it right when he drew a cartoon of a ragged weeping child holding a copy of the treaty beholding a shelled and bombed out city with the number 1940 written on the wall of a ruined house.

"Paul" of Bedfordshire is among a number of contributors who seem very sure what would have happened if we had not declared war on Germany in 1939. How do they know? Various claims are made such as that Germany would 'inevitably' have turned on Britain, and "Paul" says we would for some reason have been forced to limit our armed forces.
I don't get this. Plainly, had we entered the war in 1939 and then sued for peace in 1940, we would have been required to disarm.

But my question is not what would have happened if we had sought peace in 1940. It was too late by then, and Churchill was right to fight on. My question is what would have happened if we had never given our daft guarantee to Poland, and so never declared war in September 1939. What mechanism would Hitler then have had for forcing us, a powerfully armed neutral which he would have wanted to keep out of any war, to limit our armaments? None. On the contrary, we would have been free to continue our rearmament, we would not have thrown away all our military equipment at Dunkirk or used up much of our air force in defending our skies or bombing German civilians. By 1941, which was (I think) when the British Chiefs of Staff had expected a war to begin, we would have been far better able to withstand anything Hitler might throw at us, especially if he was by then at war with the USSR - a USSR which might be more defensible against surprise attack because it would not have seized Eastern Poland and because Hiter might not by then have occupied Western Poland either. France, too might still have been free and armed, and Belgium and Holland likewise unoccupied.

It is quite true that Hitler might have eventually provoked us into war, or declared war on us, as he did with the USA (though I am not sure why he should have wanted to do this when his hands were full with Russia. ) . But we would have been readier, and he might well have been weaker. A little more thought, please.

Had Britain not declared war in 1939 or settled for peace in 1940 it would have remained independent - sort of - but would have been forced to give up most of the Navy and air force.

The result would have been that when Hitler invaded Russia in 1941 he would have been doing so with no air raids on Germany and no Western Front and would therefore have been free to throw the entire military machine at it. He would have been free to see the holocaust to its grisly conclusion and it is by no means certain that Stalin would have defeated Germany without Germany having to fight on two fronts.

With the British armed forces neutered Japan would have made it to India with ease and might well have invaded eastern Russia as they did in 1904 forcing Stalin to fight on two fronts.

Had Pearl Harbour taken place after a German victory on the eastern front, it is by no means improbable that Hitler would have engineered some excuse to declare war on the UK as well as the USA.

With the UK armed forces, particularly the Navy, neutered by a 1939/1940 peace agreement, invading Britain from occupied France in 1942 would have been simplicity itself.

A 1939/1940 peace agreement would also have left North Africa and Palestine wide open to the Axis powers and the holocaust.

Finally, Britain is not a third rate nation. A couple of years ago I was in South Africa and read an (African) columnist in a newspaper discussing the two superpowers. He was talking about the USA and the UK.

For all our problems, those who think we are in the waste basket of history ought to travel more. The fact that a sizeable chunk of the population cannot get medical insurance doesn't make the USA any less of a superpower. What would make the USA cease to be a superpower would be to have its defence budget cut to that of Belgium. The UKs defence spending is still joint second (with Russia) in terms of $ per year.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is certainly not given enough attention in the West. Worse, often in "popular" histories, when it is brought up, it is blamed on the Anglo-French (particularly Westminster) for cocking up the Litvinov offer of an alliance. I remember hearing one of Stalin's generals years later being interviewed (ironically on a documentary series which repeated the same half-truth) mentioning that when he was briefed by Stalin on the expedition to what was then Eastern Poland that he'd had discussions with the British and the French, but "nothing feasible came from them". Basically Stalin's support had a price. He wanted territory, territory which was neither Britain's, nor France's to give to him, and if they did tacitly agree to allow him to seize these territories, it would have driven much of Eastern Europe, including possibly Poland itself to seek an alliance with Hitler for fear of Soviet Attack!

A couple of other developments which aren't given enough attention: The German-Polish non-Aggression Pact of 1934 (the precurser to the more famous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939) and the Anglo-German Naval Treaty of 1935. The second one was signed without consulting the French, who naturally believed that "perfidious Albion" may not back them up in the event of a confrontation with Nazi Germany. It was really signed in the naive idea that it would ensure that the Combined German-Japanese fleets would be no larger than the Royal Navy limited by the London treaty. It was naive to assume that both the Germans and Japanese would keep to the agreements, certainly by that point.

The first one is really a very important treaty, as it was signed at the beginning of 1934, and once it was signed it effectively ended the Little Entante. For the French it meant that the Germans would no longer be worrying about a two front war, and hence could concentrate everything to oppose a theoretical French invasion. I suspect this had almost as big an effect on the French reaction to the German re militarisation of the Rhineland in 1936 as Britain's attitude and lack of a large army did.

In all these cases (indeed in Hitler's rise to power in Germany itself) Hitler was greatly aided by the fact that his opponents were deeply divided (as the French were internally) and failed to present a united front to him. Rather they hoped for the best, imagined he meant what he said when he said he wanted peace, and took ad hoc measures that were supposed to help guarantee that there was no hostile response from Germany. The point about Stalin's treaty is that it happened long after it should have been clear that Hitler's word on these subjects was counterfit, but it was done because it enabled Stalin to profit from the general situation in Europe, by playing the Germans off against the British and the French, he gained a free hand to seize territories. Any attempt by the Western allies to have similarly bargined with Stalin (Churchill may have, seeing Hitler as a mortal threat) would have created a German block in Central Europe. In early to mid 1939 London and Paris weren't seeking War, but were hoping to deter Hitler from any further acts of agression, and were determined (officially anyway) to resist him by force if required. Their alliance with Stalin was an insurance policy, and an attempt to design a united front, not an alliance to destroy the "Nazi beast". It would have been analogous to the Post War situation with NATO. Stalin no doubt would have been willing to seize more territory if the situation allowed him to. He was, however, relatively cautious in his actions, whilst Hitler was becoming increasingly reckless. Hence the fact that Hitler, and not Stalin, started the War. Incidentally, Hitler would never have permitted Stalin to seize all of Finland, simply because this would have given the Russians control of the Baltic Sea, and this was something he couldn't tolerate, even as late as 1944.

For Mr Boatang, I would point out that the Russians had held most of Poland for longer than they held Finland, and that their Polish territories included Warsaw. Finland itself was an anomaly in the Russian Empire, in that it wasn't incorporated into the centralised system, but retained its own Parliament, with the Tsar having the title, Grand Duke of Finland.

Mr Hitchens answered my question before I could actually post it and in the process corrected some factual errors of mine. So if I have understood his posting correctly, it would seem fair to lay the charge of expansionism at Stalin's door, both before 1939 and afterwards. I have always thought this to be the case, but felt some reluctance in asserting it, owing to the number of people who have assured me it would be inaccurate to do so.

I'm prepared to admit that you might be correct on this point Mr Boatang. Perhaps the Soviet Union had considered Finland their territory for a long time and sought to reclaim it for genuine strategic reasons with respect to the threat posed by Nazi Germany.

On the other hand, I'm not so sure that there wasn't a blatant desire for outright conquest on the part of Stalin and Molotov and their sinister bullying of Finland. I think Finland made reasonable efforts to avert a crisis prior to the invasion of their country in November 1939 but the rather creepy Vyacheslav Molotov refused to budge an inch with the Finnish delegation.

As for the Nazi-Soviet dismemberment of Poland, you're a little quiet about this, Boatang. Will you say that Stalin did this because merely because he wanted a buffer state between Russia and Nazi Germany?

Perhaps. But again, one is naturally suspicious. Peter Hitchens once mentioned a 'joint victory parade staged by Nazi and Red Army troops in the then-Polish city of Brest'.

He also pointed out that, if Stalin was merely buying time in concluding the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, then why was he so hopelessly unprepared for war when Operation Barbarossa was launched and the Nazis were at the gates of Moscow? Is it because this view is pure fantasy and that Stalin really just wanted a nice chunk of Poland?

I'd be very interested in reading what Peter Hitchens thinks about the claim that Stalin himself was always an expansionist, though perhaps not quite to the extent of Hitler.

Mr "Boatang" speaks, after urging another contributor to read up on his history "Yes, Finland was trade off for Poland, but the Soviets considered Finland theirs anyway, much like Taiwan and China. It's not really expansionism is it, trying to re-conquer Finland, which you had controlled for 120 years."

The fact that someone considers something theirs anyway, doesn't, in international law, have all that much significance. Hitler's Germany considered most of central Europe 'theirs' and duly seized it. Whether you like this or not is not the point here. The point is that Mr "Boatang" is making one rule for Stalin and another for Hitler. Why? Soviet 'expansionism' (by the "Boatang" definition) began well before 1939, with the Polish-Soviet war and the reconquest of the Ukraine and other territories which were taken from the Russian Empire after the 1917 Brest-Litovsk treaty. Stalin's price for an alliance in 1939 was to re-absorb Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, also lost to Moscow after 1917, and the chunk of Romania known as Bessarabia, plus of course the Eastern bit of Poland, up to the river Bug, which is now part of Belarus. I do not think Stalin's free hand in Finland was a 'trade-off' for Poland. It was part of a general Moscow-Berlin settlement, in which Poland ceased to exist and was gobbled up by both of them. Stalin naively expected this to last. Hitler always intended, I think, to carry on eastwards. But all these things Stalin took, and despite being badly mauled to begin with he succeeded in taking sizeable bites out of Finland (which was for many years afterwards a vassal state of the Soviet Union, which had to the right of veto over Cabinet appointments in Helsinki). So I think we can agree that Stalin was expansionist well before 1945 ( he was also, in this period, fighting the Japanese in Mongolia, and had his eye on some of the Japanese Islands, which Russia still possesses as a result of the war). The fact that most British people have a scanty grasp of geography in Eastern Europe helps them to forget just how busy the USSR was in expanding, before Hitler invaded it in 1941 and gave it the excuse to roll up to the Elbe. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a moment of immense importance in ideology, history and diplomacy, is incredibly scantily dealt with in most Western histories.

Wes, I really suggest you rada up on the history of Finland before saying that.

Yes Finland was trade off for Poland, but the Soviets considered Finland theirs anyway, much like Taiwan and China. It's not really expansionism is it, trying to re-conquer Finland, which you had controlled for 120 years.

Oh dear, Boatang. So what would you call his invasion of Finland in 1939, then? Was that not an act of conquest and flagrant expansionism? And don't tell me that this was all about the strategic considerations with respect to that doughty little nation, which had also embarrassed the Soviet Union by its creation of an economically successful society, at ease with itself. He and Molotov were no better than Hitler or Ribbentrop.

I don't have very long for this reply Mr Renier. I think that the Sino Chinese War would have dragged on. The Japanese would have been less and less able to launch major offensives due to the high economic costs of the war (I mentioned before that they were already fully mobilised, and they curtailed any serious offensives in China until 1944 in order to fight the Pacific War). There would have been a 3 way fight for supremacy in China between the Japanese, the Kuomintang and the Communists. The Kuomintang would have received some support from Washington because of the China lobby, and the Communists may have received varying levels of support from Stalin. I don't think either of them would have been able to fully dominate the others, not for many years. I think China still had many Warlords in local areas, and may best be thought of as Afghanistan on a truly gigantic scale. I wouldn't like to hazard who'd end up on top, but I suspect that unless the Japanese were able to sign a peace treaty with either of the main Chinese groups recognising their control of the costal areas, they would eventually have had to withdraw from much of what they captured, simply because of the economic costs which would have undermined the militarist government. Their puppet regime in Manchuria would probably have endured though, as would their rule over Korea. The wild card in all this would have been whether a war would have broken out between them and the Soviet Union in the east, as it threatened to do in 1939. I suspect that Stalin would have held back unless he was virtually guaranteed victory. I wouldn't want to lay money on whether the Kuomintang or Communists would have triumphed in China in this scenario, but the Japanese invasion certainly helped the Communists who were under severe threat in 1937. Either way, there would have been many years of destructive struggle in China (there was anyway). The three alternatives were that there would have been a two or three way division between the Japanese and the rival Chinese groups; a Communist China, or a Kuomintang China. With the first two, there may have been gunboats on the Yangtze until the 1960’s at least, possibly beyond. I don't think China would be the same as it is now though.

As for the USSR. They would have been sitting on the sidelines waiting for an opportunity to profit from the War in the West. Much would depend upon how the War developed. Gamlin's plan was to attack the Germans in 1941, when the expansion of the British Army would have given him numerical superiority. If the German offensive of 1940 had failed, it would have weakened them considerably, so it is possible (just) that the Anglo-French could have won the war in 1941. In this scenario, Stalin would have sought to retain eastern Poland, the Baltic states and Besserabia, not to mention those parts of Finland he’d seized in the Winter War. If the War had dragged on longer, he may have sought to profit from the situation by taking parts of Iran, as he sought to do in 1946, relying on Britain not wishing to fight the USSR as well as a costly war against Germany. He may have tried to play off the Western Allies and Germany in a bidding war for his cooperation. For the Western allies, he may have traded an oil embargo of Germany in exchange for concessions elsewhere. None of these things would have been positive. Another unknown would have been the future of Germany itself. Would the French have demanded it be broken up, Richelieu style? Would the old Junkers have taken control of the country from the discredited Nazis? They still were influential in 1940, it was the purge following the July Plot that finally broke them. That being the case would there have been a negotiated peace, or unconditional surrender? I suspect that an Anglo-French alliance would have been more willing to have a negotiated end to the war with a non-Nazi government. However Stalin may have sought to increase his influence at the expense of a defeated Germany, and if the war had been long, it remains to be seen how Britain and France would have dealt with it, with no US involvement. As I said, a short war, ending in autumn 1941, and the Anglo-French could probably have contained the Soviet Union. There would have been a Cold War, but with Britain being the Standard Barer of the West. Nuclear weapons may eventually have been developed, and may also have been used on a large scale! However they probably wouldn’t have been developed before Stalin’s death, and a more peaceful world might have ensued. Stalin may have sought to invade Western Europe; he would certainly have sought to use the strength of the Red army to profit from the situation. A long and exhausting war would have reduced the capacity of the Anglo-French to resist this, and would probably have made post war Germany more susceptible to Communist influence as well.

The basic point is that if France had not fallen, the Japanese would not have attacked in the East. Firstly Singapore was threatened because the Japanese seized Saigon without a fight, which brought Singapore and all the seas in the area within range of land based aircraft. If France hadn’t fallen, Japan would not have been able to take Saigon without a fight. Secondly, the oil embargo and the ultimatum on withdrawing from China were the initiative of the US. The circumstances of 1941 meant that Britain (not to mention the Dutch in exile) had to agree to these because they needed American help. If France hadn’t fallen, Britain would have been in a less dependent position, and may have not been willing to risk war with Japan by taking these measures, and so would Britain’s client, the Dutch government in exile. The Japanese would certainly have made various “threats” to prevent such an embargo. Quite how the Japanese would have handled the approach of bankruptcy is another matter. Possibly they would have looted the territories under their occupation, or rather looted them even more rapaciously. I don’t think they would have been able to bring themselves to withdraw in the short to medium term simply for political reasons, and it may have gone on longer than the European War.

America may have remained introverted, not totally cut off from world affairs (they weren’t quite so isolated pre-war as some people remember, think of the Kellogg-Briand Pact), but they would probably have not sought to be a “player” in the way they are now, mostly lobbying to ensure that American businesses weren’t excluded from trade, or protecting their nationals abroad. If there’d been a Third World War, then they might have emerged from their relative isolation, but so long as they didn’t feel threatened, I dare say the Americans would have preferred to avoid “all foreign entanglements”.

Would the world be better today? It depends upon your point of view. It also depends upon whether Britain and France were not too weakened to deter the USSR from major acts of aggression. But I think that Britain would probably still be seen as the world power, with the Sterling block and other such institutions remaining. The post war economic miracles of West Germany and Japan, not to mention the more recent ones such as South Korea probably wouldn’t have occurred. So I think many parts of the world would be poorer. Technical developments like jet aircraft and electronics (especially microprocessors) would probably have happened, but would have taken much longer to develop, and our world would be much more like the one of the 1960’s in those regards. If an Osama Bin Laden figure existed, he would focus overwhelmingly on Britain, with France as the understudy, and comment on how he hadn’t attacked the USA. On the other hand, the security forces may well have dealt with such figures much earlier. Israel also wouldn’t exist, but the Jewish/Arab conflict continuing, with both sides taking potshots at Britain, but the Jewish population of the Area would be much smaller. I suspect there would be some sort of “joint” Jewish-Arab government for Palestine, with Britain retaining Haifa and a strip of land from Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and bases elsewhere, and trying to keep the peace. India, incidentally, would probably be a united country, but with New Delhi probably bending over backwards to try to placate a somewhat sullen Muslim population that throws up separatist groups. So there would be probably as many problems as today, and some would sound familiar, but the world would be quite different. The main issue is that the West would be less apologetic about intervention, and certainly less duplicitous about it.

I think that the collapse of the French army is as pivotal an event as Adrianople, or Napoleon's victory at Marengo or defeat at Waterloo. The world has never been the same since.

Grant: by the way, I forgot to address your point "As for the manpower shortage in the UK which he thinks is so obvious, the Germans seem to have managed this without importing as many immigrants as us, despite their cities and infrastructure being more seriously damaged than ours and despite them losing far more people."

Well Grant, the Germans in fact suffered acute labour shortages after the war, which is why they invited thousands of Turks into the country.

Grsnt, if someone is able to do so, there is no legitimate excuse for them not taking a job or blaming their shirking on the government. Unfortunately, you've accidentally turned yourself into a dosser's apologist in an attempt to prop up your silly second world war theories.

Disinclination to work mainly stems from the massive deflation in consumer goods. Up until now, buying power for your £5.50 per hour has risen inexorably in almost every sector with the exception of property.

To Grant: fair enough, you were referring to the invasion of Poland only.

However, being fundamentally evil, I'm sure the Nazis would have proceeded to ethnically cleanse Poland irrespective of whether or not we had joined the conflict.

You also seem to think that Hitler "let us escape" at Dunkirk.
Well, this situation is a perfect example of my earlier point about how the course of history often turns upon snap decisions or pure luck. We were very lucky to escape Dunkirk with 300,000 or so troops. If things had turned out for the worse, we could've quite easily emerged with only 20,000 or so. The whole episode can be regarded as something of a miracle. I do not believe that there is any evidence that Hitler let us escape. Why on earth would he? Besides, Hitler's generals had begun to plan for the invasion of Britain months before Dunkirk even happened. To allow 300,000 of our best troops walk free would've been madness (not that Hitler was incapable of silly decision making.)

Eric B misunderstands my position. In an economically successful society people increasingly refuse to do unpleasant jobs. But these jobs are some of the most important in the country. In order to make these jobs attractive wages must rise. But if your country is run by traitors, they will just import foreigners to do the work.
The wages of the poor will then remain the same whilst the wages of the rich will increase.
This is the main reason that the income disparity between the rich and the poor is now much greater than it was in 1945. It also demonstrates that the Labour Party really cares nothing for the working classes they pretend to represent.
As for the £5.50 per hour minimum wage which you find so attractive, have you not noticed that the average house price is still over £200,000! The only people who can afford to live on £5.50 an hour are those who don't have to pay for their own accommodation, ie teenagers and those living in state-provided homes. And, of course, a disproportionate number of council accommodation is now given to immigrants to enable them to work for £5.50 an hour!
To reply to G Whitfield, by "Polish Campaign" I mean the initial conquest of Poland, not the aftermath. As for the manpower shortage in the UK which he thinks is so obvious, the Germans seem to have managed this without importing as many immigrants as us, despite their cities and infrastructure being more seriously damaged than ours and despite them losing far more people.
You raise an issue which also should be addressed by the defenders of the standard version. If Hitler really had designs on England, why did he let the BEF escape at Dunkirk? Even now we are not allowed to contemplate this proof that he had no desire to invade our country except as a defensive measure.

Wesley it is too easy to write off "Herr Hitler" as a layabout and a buffoon. However he did, apparently, have something of a magnetic personality, and full marks to those who saw through it. He also had an instinctive grasp of politics which was quite remarkable. It's fine to make a joke out of him during the war, and this is something that would enrage his supporters (who knows what he would have made of it). I also find Stalin a fairly impressive figure, and Napoleon, and Ghengis Khan, Attila the Hun, Julian the Appostate, Alexander the Great, Cyrus the Great... Doesn't mean I'd want to live under their rules. Hitler ate cake at the Burghoff. Well Churchill drank a fair bit, as did Roosevelt, and they both smoked too much. Roosevelt certainly had affairs. A far less "endering" personal quality of "Der Furher" (personal as opposed to mass murder, torture etc.) was his tendency to ramble on, and on, and on. Laugh at him, fine. But don't underestimate him. Too many of his opponents in Germany did so, and the result was that he eclipsed them all. Taking power in Germany isn't the same as staging a coup in Upper Volta after all.

Forgive my impertinence, but I don’t think you have been paying close attention to the writings of Grant (whether it is worth doing so is another matter).

Grant wrote that “the entire Polish campaign cost "only" 65,000 Polish lives.” This “campaign” in Grant’s eyes obviously ended with the conquest of Poland. Everything that happened afterwards was due to us attacking the poor Germans.

You will note that the Polish campaign was not an act of war – “In order to defend Poland we started a war which eventually killed 50 million” – our fault, you see. We should have just left the Nazis to conduct their “campaigns”, as all they really wanted was Lebensraum, and a re-unification of the German people (who of course had a long history of being a unified people) which is why they then invaded Soviet Russia....you see?

You also missed the telling point that
“when we declared war on Germany the Nazis had been responsible for, at most, a few hundred deaths”, which, given that they topped about seventy-seven of their own SA in one night, means they were incredibly harmless for the rest of the time.

History has evidently done the Nazis a great disservice, but so long as people like Grant are around the flame still burns…

Grant, unlike you, I don't have a problem with other races or immigration. I only have an issue with an unlimited, unmonitored influx and the subsequent reinventing of our own cultural identity. I'm perfectly happy with genuine asylum seekers and a sustainable level of immigration provided a sensible degree of integration is pursued.

The notion that, these days, jobs are taken by immigrants at the expense of the ordinary 'working' man is arrant nonsense. All respectable employers have to pay minimum wage, regardless of nationality. A wage which, in my view, is increasingly on the generous side at, something like, £5.50 an hour. This sort of nonsense foments unrest and provides the work-shy with a specious excuse for their idleness.

If it gets chilly make sure you pull that stripey red, white and blue blanket tight.

In 1942 Churchill remarked that he had not become “the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.”

Perversely, while the ending of the First World War saw the dissolution of the the empires of the defeated Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey; the ending of the Second World War would ring in the death knell of the victorious British Empire.

At the expense of the defeated Central Powers, the First World War saw the British Empire make its last great imperial acquisitions. But the former age of empire building had in fact come to a close – all of the newly won territories captured by the Allies were to be held in “trust” as “Mandates”, under the auspices of the, then, newly formed League of Nations.

When it came to sharing-out the spoils of that first, great conflict of the 20th century, Great Britain and her Empire were in a position to take the “lion's share”. From the defeated German empire, fell the following spoils:

German East Africa (modern-day Tanzania – excluding Zanzibar): vast majority to Great Britain (the remainder to Belgium).
Togoland: jointly divided between Great Britain and France.
German West Africa (Cameroons): two thin strips to Great Britain (majority to France).
German South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia): to the Union of South Africa.
German (north-eastern) New Guinea: to the Commonwealth of Australia.
German (western) Samoa: to the Dominion of New Zealand.

But it was in – what was then termed the “near east” – the modern-day Middle East, that the most far-reaching repercussions would be felt. In 1882 Great Britain had occupied Egypt (though it was still nominally under Ottoman suzerainty). In 1914, with the start of the First World War, Egypt was declared a British Protectorate – as was the Ottoman province of Kuwait to the east; and in 1915 with the entry of Turkey into the war on the side of the Central Powers, the former Ottoman held island of Cyprus (leased and administered by Great Britain since 1878) was also declared a British Protectorate.

By the war's end the British Empire had acquired for herself a swathe of territory captured from the defeated Ottoman empire (and now held by her under the proviso of the newly formed League of Nations): stretching from Palestine (which originally included Transjordan), on the Mediterranean seaboard; on through the vast, oil-rich deserts of Iraq, to the shores of the Persian Gulf in the east. And incorporated within the League of Nations' remit for British Mandate Palestine was the proviso to establish within that land a “Jewish National Home”, as had been first echoed by the so-called Balfour Declaration of November 1917...

In the explanatory notes of our family's 19th century Bible (which does not contain the year of its publication – but is inscribed with the year 1866 in a hand-written presentation), is the following note concerning Revelation 16:12 – and the final exhaustion of the Ottoman empire:

“The Euphrates is here used for 'the empire founded by the Euphratean horsemen [the Turks] of the sixth trumpet,' and the drying up of its waters 'to imply the exhaustion of all the political sources of wealth and power which contribute to the strength and greatness of... [that] empire...'”.

In Isaiah 8:7, God compares the conquests of the Assyrian empire to a river in flood: “Now therefore, behold, the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many, even the king of Assyria, and all his glory: and he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks.”

In Revelation 16:12, the same imagery is used – but in reverse – to show the drying up of an empire. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) wrote the following concerning this interpretation:

“Analogous to the loosing of these [four] Angels [of the sixth Trumpet (Revelation 9:13-21) – being the second, and Turkish phase of Islam's conquests] is the drying up of the waters of [the] Euphrates in the sixt[h] Vial. For these two actions must correspond because the beginnings of this Trumpet & Vial which are contemporary. Now by the waters of this river we are to understand the people situate upon it... that is, the Turkish Sultanies. And by the pouring [out of] a Vial upon this River the inflicting of some great calamity upon that people: such as was the Tattarian invasion. And by the consequent drying up [of] the waters thereof the wasting of the power & dominion of that people... that is, the [final] dissolution of the Turkish Sultanies by that invasion.” (Untitled Treatise on Revelation by Isaac Newton. Source: Yahuda Ms. 1.8, Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem. From online transcript on the University of Sussex's “The Newton Project”).

Richard Lattimore, who was for many years Professor of Greek at Bryn Mawr, made a translation of the Revelation in the 1960s. In the Preface to a reprint of his translation he remarks:

“It was while I was teaching various Greek texts to beginning students that I was struck by the natural ease with which Revelation turned itself into English.... [In my translation] I have held throughout to the principle of keeping as close to the Greek as possible, not only for sense and for individual words, but in the belief that fidelity to the original word order and syntax may yield an English prose that to some extent reflects the style of the original.” (From, “The Four Gospels and the Revelation: Newly translated from the Greek by Richard Lattimore”, Hutchinsons of London, 1980).

Richard Lattimore translates Revelation 16:12 thus:

“And the sixth [angel] poured out his bowl upon the great river Euphrates; and its water was dried, so as to make ready the way of the kings from the rising of the sun.”

For comparison, the Authorised (King James) Version translates the above passage so:

“And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.”

Who then are these eastern kings – “the kings from the rising of the sun.”? In his book “End Time Delusions”, Steve Wohlberg makes the following observation: “Cyrus came from 'the east' to conquer ancient Babylon (see Isaiah 44:26-28; 46:11).” He also observes that, “the name 'Cyrus' [in Persian] means 'sun'.”

For an explanation of the apocalyptic imagery used in the Revelation, it is to the Old Testament that we must turn...

Between 606-604 BC, the Babylonian empire conquered Jerusalem and carried the Jews off captive to Babylon. In 539 BC, Cyrus the Great, the king of the Medes and Persians, conquered the ancient city of Babylon. And in the succession of “world” empires (which was given in an apocalyptic revelation to Daniel), the Babylonian empire was replaced (at its appointed time in the prophetic scheme) by that of Media-Persia.

In the British Museum is the ancient Cyrus Cylinder, which records Cyrus' conquest of Babylon. The river Euphrates ran through double doors into the ancient city of Babylon. Cyrus and his army had earlier dug trenches up-stream to divert the flow of the river. During the night of Belshazzar's drunken feast, the waters of the Euphrates were literally “dried up” and thus allowed Cyrus and his men access under the double doors, and into the city. The Babylonian empire had been, “weighed in the balances” and “found wanting”; that very night – the night of the “[hand]writing on the wall” - it was to be no more...

I am of the opinion that this eastern power, which in the Revelation is symbolised by the sun, is none other than that of the British Empire – it was the British Empire, which after the First World War took the “lions share” of the former territories of the Ottoman empire from the Turks. But more importantly: it was the British Empire – like Cyrus' empire, two and a half millennia before – that would have a policy of allowing the Jews to return back to their ancient homeland.

I can think of a no more fitting symbol for the British Empire than that of the rising sun: for due to its vastness there was always a corner of the world, over which – from dawn to dusk each day a Union Flag – fluttering in the breeze, would be flying. During its heyday, the British Empire was truly, “an empire on which the sun never set...”

“The sun never set on the British Empire,
Because the sun sets in the West,
And the British Empire was in the East.” Anon.

It was Disraeli who bestowed upon Queen Victoria the title, Empress of India, and it was Disraeli who said that Britain was an ORIENTAL and *not* a EUROPEAN power. Lord Curzon's remarked that, “As long as we rule India we are the greatest power in the world. If we lose it we shall drop straightaway to a third-rate power.”

The “Oxford Dictionary of Current English” gives the following definition:

During the days of the British Raj, the Viceroy of India's flag was a Union Flag, in the centre of which, on the St George's cross, was superimposed “The Star of India”, surmounted by the Royal Crown. This, “Star of India” badge was a SUN-BURST in the centre of which was a five-pointed star, surrounded by a garter, bearing the motto: “Heavens' Light Our Guide”.

But does not the Revelation say “kings (plural) from the rising of the sun”? The capture of Palestine was a joint venture – which not only involved troops from Great Britain and her Indian Empire; but also troops from her far-flung, and more easterly dominions of Australia and New Zealand. The troops from these fledgeling dominions would play a major rôle in the conflict.

Also the following information is of interest: In 1619, Shah Abbas of Persia, granted the English East India Company a monopoly in Persia's silk trade and the Persian port of Bandar Abbas became the Company's headquarters in the region.

Due to instability in the region and Arab piracy, the East India Company, in 1763, moved its Persian headquarters from Bandar Abbas to the more secure port of Bushire. Here a British Resident was installed. The “British” presence in the region originated from her Indian Empire – for a while in the 19th century there were rival British legations in Teheran: one from HM Government in London; and the other from Britain's Indian Empire. Brian Lapping in his 1980s book “End of Empire”, (which was based on his Channel 4 TV series of the same name) included a chapter on the ending of “British rule” in Persia – though nominally it wasn't even part of the British Empire, he felt that it warranted an inclusion due to the high level of British influence in the region.

In 1839, the East India Company extended its power still further, when – with 700 men, supported by a couple of Royal Navy sloops, Captain Stafford Haines of the Indian Navy annexed Aden to the Company's Bombay Presidency. This act made Aden the first imperial acquisition of Queen Victoria's reign.

In the May/June 2007 edition of “Sword” magazine (the successor magazine to “Prophecy Today”/ “Prophecy Today International”), the Australian Kelvin Crombie – in the first part of an on-going article on “Britain's Destiny: Restorer of Israel?”, wrote:

“In... [the] ancient power play [of Cyrus' Persian empire allowing the Jews to return to their land] we see already the seeds of Britain's role several thousand years later – as the restorer of Israel. Three elements are present in this Persian connection: 1) the Land of Israel as strategic centre-point of the geo-political axis; 2) the Land of Israel as critical economic centre point and 3) the restoration of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel as a proxy group to fit in with the geo-political policy of an Empire.”

Returning back to the “[hand]writing on the wall” of Daniel chapter 5: it has been pointed by W Edmund Filmer in his book, “Daniel's Predictions” (Regency Press, London, 1979), that:

“'The inscription actually contains a string of weight names, viz mene, tekel and peres, with the meaning mina, shekel and half mina, the last named word being documented in the Mishna and other Jewish writings', peres signifying the half mina. Since a mina consisted of fifty shekels, a shekel of twenty gerahs, the total weight in gerahs signified by the writing was:

On the thread “Gaza proves that any Middle East deal will fail” (in the Archives for March); I posted some quotes from Dr H Grattan Guinness' 1886 book, “Light for the Last Days”, in which he was expectant that the year 1917 (AD) would mark the terminus of the 2,520 solar years or “seven times” (i.e. 7 x 360 years) of biblical prophecy concerning the treading down of Jerusalem. In the same post I also quoted the following words of Dr H Aldersmith, MB, FRCS, written during the closing years of the 19th century:

“One day, some slight trouble may light up a great European war, which in the end may see the fall of Turkey... and Great Britain in possession of Palestine.... If so, as students of the prophetical Word are agreed that, when the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled, and Jerusalem ceases to be trodden down [by the Turks]; we may expect it to [then] pass... into... [British] hands... this period may end about 1917 A.D. Time only will show...” (“The Fulness of the Gentiles”, 2nd edition, 1896).

In Revelation 16:13, following immediately on from the drying up of the Euphrates, three unclean spirits like frogs are mentioned which “go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of the great day of God Almighty... And he gathered them together into a place called... Armageddon.” (Revelation 16:14-16).

Each of the judgements in the Revelation are mirror images of those that fell upon the gods of ancient Egypt at the time of the Exodus.

In ancient Egypt the frog-headed goddess Hekt was regarded as a form of the goddess Hathor. Greek writers have preserved significant Egyptian lore regarding the frog. According to Horapollo (I, 25) the frog symbolised an imperfectly formed man. The Greeks accepted the view that the slime-coated frogs were half-formed – part of their bodies being still mud as they crawled about or squatted awkwardly. They believed that if the *river dried up*, the frog would be *incomplete* – half mud, half frog. Ælian (II, 56) mentions a shower of incomplete frogs.

“One day, some slight trouble may light up a great European war...”, so wrote Dr H Aldersmith, in 1896.

In “The War of the World” television series (Channel 4, 19th June, 2006; based on his book of the same name), the British historian, Professor Niall Ferguson remarked:

“The difficult thing to work out, is how an act of terrorism [the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand] in an obscure corner of 'Ruratania', could have such massive consequences? How exactly could the gunshots... have sparked-off the first of the century's two world wars? A conflict that all over the globe raged and claimed nearly 10 million lives. After all, assassinations were ten-a-penny in the early nineteen-hundreds. Terrorism was all the rage amongst extreme nationalists. Why did this one criminal act have such vast *world shaking* consequences?”

(“There was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.” Revelation 16:18).

Professor Ferguson continued: “The answer is that when the Archduke was shot, he was driving over one of the world's great fault lines; the fateful historic border between the west and the east – the Occident and the Orient. The trouble with geological fault lines is as the earth's tectonic plates grind uneasily against one another, they're where earthquakes happen. There in Sarajevo it was the geo-political tectonic plates – known as empires, that were shifting. Turkey's was giving way [drying up!]; Austria's was pushing forward; and so too was Russia's...”

“Once, Bosnia had been a part of the Ottoman empire... but in 1908 Austria had annexed Bosnia. When a Serb murdered their Archduke, the Austrians... demanded redress from Serbia and the Russians felt they could not afford to see Serbia humiliated. All the ingredients were thus in place for an imperial war between Austria and Russia over the balance of power in the Balkans.”

It was in the dried up left-overs of the Turkish empire, with its ethnic mix and its imperfectly formed borders – in which many Serbs dwelt across the border in Austria-Hungarian annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, (remember, according to the lore preserved by Horapollo, the frog symbolised an imperfectly [or half] formed man [or nation]) – it was here, in this “cock-pit” of Europe, that tensions were running high; Borijove Jevtic, a Black Hand member, even went as far as stating that the very date of Franz Ferdinand's visit incensed him:

“How dared Franz Ferdinand, not only the representative of the oppressor but in his own person an arrogant tyrant, enter Sarajevo on that day? Such an entry was a studied insult. 28 June is the day on which the old Serbian kingdom was conquered by the Turks at the battle of Amselfelde in 1389. That was no day for Franz Ferdinand, the new oppressor, to venture to the very doors of Serbia for a display of the force of arms which kept us beneath his heel. Our decision was taken almost immediately. Death to the tyrant!”

It was in the Balkans – in the “dried up” left-overs of the Ottoman empire – that this volatile political and nationalist mix was ignited.

Writing after the fall of Jerusalem to British and Empire forces under the command of General Allenby, in December 1917 – but before the final close of the “Great War” of 1914-18 – M M'Intyre contemplated thus:

“Since the present world-war broke out, the question is sometimes asked, Are we in Armageddon now? It is possible that we are, but one cannot speak with decision on the point. Certainly, this war is like Armageddon in its extent... Russia has [now] abandoned us; and no one can foretell the future course of policy in that unhappy country. So far as we can see, there is nothing to hinder the war from undergoing fresh modifications, until it has assumed all the features of that dark struggle foretold in Scripture in such ominous terms. On the other hand, this [war] may be only the devastating prelude to still deadlier conflicts which will break out in the near future.” (“The Starting Place of Glory”, circa 1918).

And in Vol. VI of her “The Divine Calendar” series, Augusta Cook wrote the following prophetic words – a mere six years after the signing of the Armistice:

“The fifth volume of 'The Divine Calendar,' ... was largely written while the Great War of 1914-18 was in progress. With that war, we entered the Era of Armageddon. We are still in that Era. To-day, we are not passing through a long period of peace: we are only in an Armistice – a lull before the greater storm.” (“The Divine Calendar, Vol. VI: The Seven Golden Candlesticks”, The Marshall Press, Ltd., 1924).

Churchill’s constituency association deselected him as its parliamentary candidate a generation after the War, so his mythic status doesn’t seem to have been established even by then, and really would appear to have begun only with his death very soon thereafter.

Churchill presumably didn’t mind too much what his constituency association thought, since he openly regarded himself as above party, and that party returned the compliment, eventually and within Churchill’s lifetime giving its Leadership to Alec Douglas-Home, Chamberlain’s old PPS, who had abstained rather than support Churchill’s wartime plans for the political geography of post-War Europe.

The failure of Germany to invade Britain even on the eve of the American intervention, when conquest of this utterly exhausted country would have been easy, strongly suggests that, all rhetoric aside, there was never any such intention, in line with both the known geopolitical ambitions and the known cultural tastes of the Nazi leaders to the very end.

We had to defeat people who were dropping bombs on our towns and cities, who were sinking our ships, who were shooting at our soldiers in several parts of the world, and who were occupying the Channel Islands for strategic reasons within that conflict. But that does not in itself prove that they wanted to invade and subjugate us. Handed that opportunity on a plate, they strikingly failed to take it.

Meanwhile, have you ever wondered why the United States has never had the sort of Old Labour party for the revival of which in Britain Peter Hitchens has repeatedly called? One of the most significant contributing factors was the entry of the United States into the Second World War.

The United States could have had an utterly non-Marxist, and indeed anti-Marxist, Left, initially related to Roosevelt and the New Deal as the early Labour Party was related to the old Liberal Party.

Drawing on Southern Agrarianism and the Share Our Wealth movement, on the Farm-Labor Party, on the Catholic Social Teaching popularised by Father Coughlin and others, on Francis Townsend’s campaign for old age pensions, and on so much else, it would have been rural and urban; Protestant and Catholic; WASP/Scots-Irish, German/Scandinavian and Irish/Italian/Polish; Southern, Western and North-Eastern.

Based on the demand for jobs, health care, education, decent wages and working conditions, proper housing, transport infrastructure, and so forth, that movement would, as much as anything else, have not only incorporated, but actually called into being, the black Civil Rights Movement. Both the problems and the solutions would have been (and are) colour-blind.

Yes, many, even most, Southern Agrarians were white supremacists (as with being anti-Semitic, who wasn’t in the Thirties?), almost always without ever having thought about it. And there was a subtler but no less virulent racism in the West, especially.

But these things would not have survived as mainstream opinion once the movement had begun to grow and develop. A hint of what might have been can be seen in the support of President Johnson, an old Southern Democrat, for Civil Rights. Imagine if, by that stage, this had not been a party-splitting issue.

But Roosevelt moved towards, and eventually formed, a military alliance with Stalin in Europe (America, like Britain, was always going to have to fight a war against Japan, but that is a whole other story). The emerging American democratic (whether or not Democratic) Left was horrified. It suddenly found itself sympathetic towards the enemy of that alliance, and began to adopt, among other things, that enemy’s crude and violent anti-Semitism.

The Midwestern farmers were always Republicans, while their farm hands and their industrial labouring co-regionalists became suspicious of the Democrats as Communist fellow-travellers. The same happened to the traditional Catholics and to the Southern whites.

The Democratic coalition that had delivered phenomenal socio-economic progress, and which promised so much more, began to fall apart, and finally did so in the Sixties and Seventies, when the Democratic Party had become completely disconnected from both Catholic and classically Protestant thought. As I have said before, ahead lay Ronald Reagan and George Waterboarding Bush.

In the meantime, such Left as there was in the United States became confined to the Communist Party (leading to McCarthyism, which was able to brand even the most mildly social-democratic views as “Communist”) or to various Trotskyist factions, with their warring Stalinist and Trotskyist alcoves at City College of New York.

And out of the Trotskyist alcove eventually emerged the neoconservative movement.

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